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Eat your heart out Part 1

When we got engaged, both Sol and I looked forward to one thing: the food tasting. I mean, we also looked forward to the whole spending the rest of our lives together thing, eternal happiness, blah blah blah, but mostly we were psyched about the food. We love to eat, and I knew we would come up with some pretty awesome ideas for our wedding feast.

Because Sol and I love to cook and appreciate gourmet meals, I knew we didn’t want the typical bland, boring wedding food. Some people don’t really care about the food so much; people rarely remember what was served, the meal only constitutes one hour out of the whole day, etc.—I get it. But I really wanted our meal to reflect our tastes and Sol’s ethnic traditions, so we got serious about catering.

Melissa did an excellent job tracking down two amazing catering companies: Jewell Events Catering and Entertaining Company. We set up tastings with both on consecutive days so that my parents could come down from Wisconsin to give us their opinion. (As my parents are bona fide foodies, they were more than happy to help out.)

Jewell was first on our list, and we were incredibly impressed! I’ve never in my life had food at a wedding that tasted like what they prepared for us, and we were just in love with Dana, the sweet and talented Jewell coordinator who put the whole thing together. Here are some of our favorites from the tasting:

Bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with goat cheese

Petite brie and apricot tartlets with slivered almonds

Keema samosas with raita dipping sauce

Sweet potato ravioli with toasted pine nuts

Petite strawberry shortcakes

Wrigleyville sliders with Mertz cheese and ketchup

Mini Chicago-style hotdogs

The food was delicious, but the experience was slightly marred by some idiot breaking into my parents’ car and stealing their navigation system in broad daylight right in front of the building! One of the Jewell employees actually chased the guy down and was able to retrieve the navigation system, but the car window was completely busted and needed emergency repairs. Dana and her coworkers could not have been more helpful and apologetic about everything, and my dad kept a cool head about the whole situation.

We left stuffed and happy, and we all agreed that there was virtually no way the food at our next tasting could top what we had just experienced. To be continued.